Unless you plan on attempting to punt categories at your 2019 draft, at some point, one must acquire stolen bases. If you plan on completely ignoring the SB category – you can stop reading this article now. But for the rest of us, here is a look at where some potential bargains for speed may present itself in drafts.

For these draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from December 1, 2018 to present).

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It’s time to really get for the 2019 fantasy season and start and release out a set of hitter rankings to nitpick. In all fairness, some of the following projections need to be blown up. Normally, I just average several projections and use them for my fantasy values with great success. With a ‘wisdom of the crowd’ approach, I usually make sure one extreme value, high or low, doesn’t dominate my decision.

Some people get on me for just following these projections. Generally, I do follow them but just as a starting point. As I’ve shown this last week, I add in my own adjustments as I see fit into the baseline values. While Steamer has been out for a few months, other projections are now becoming available. Today, I just wanted to compare them to see who are some of the more divisive players.

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Step one, select Mike Trout.

I’m kidding. Finding a good value in the power department can be a challenge in the early rounds. Assuming you’re not picking at the very front of the draft, your options usually fall into one of two categories.

1. 15 to 30 home runs, 15 to 30 stolen bases
2. 40 or more home runs, no stolen bases

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The Indians, Rays and to everyone’s surprise, Mariners made a trade last week with the following final results:

• Rays get Yandy Diaz and Cole Sulser
• Mariners get Edwin Encarnacion, 77th pick, and $5M
• Indians get Jake Bauers, Carlos Santana, and $6M

For my analysis, I’m going to focus on just Diaz and Bauers. Both have shown great potential but their minor league results have not yet translated to the majors.

Yandy Diaz (NFBC ADP Rank: 475)

With Jason Kipnis and his $17M contract likely to play second and Jose Ramirez at third, Diaz wasn’t guaranteed to play in Clevland. He is now in Tampa.

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The Major League Rule 5 draft kicked off at noon today and finished a few minutes later. In typical rapid fire, 14 unprotected players were selected to go join new teams. Inevitably, some of them will be traded before the start of the season. Others will be returned to their original club.

The beauty of the Rule 5 draft is that the worst teams pick first. These are the clubs that are 1. most likely to keep their selection and 2. most likely to play their picks. You don’t find Odubel Herrera or Brad Keller by hiding them under the dankest corner of the bench. In fact, the 11 teams with the best record in 2018 made a total of zero selections. This likely reflects their intentions to continue competing at a high level – they don’t have the flexibility to nurse the types of players usually selected in the Rule 5 draft.

That said, a few of the 14 selected players could have a fantasy impact in 2019.

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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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Last week I wrote up the first 8 rounds of my NFBC draft from the Arizona Fall League and I did say rounds 9-23 would come on Wednesday… it is technically Wednesday so even though I clearly meant last Wednesday, let’s count it. It’s not like I didn’t write in the meantime, I did profiles on David Dahl (here), Harrison Bader (here), and Ronald Acuña Jr. (here), so feel free to check those out, too. At any rate, it’s time to finish up this draft recap so let’s roll!

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It’s rankings time so the comments are open for everyone to go batshit crazy about how a computer program and I are wrong.  We are both ready for everyone’s best shot as neither one of us gives a flying  f***.

As part of my soon to be released e-book, The Process, the Standing Gain Points formulas will be included for several league types. I took the one for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, merge it with Steamer projections, and created some overall rankings.

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Can you believe it’s already November? I always lament the end of the season, but the gold lining is my annual trip to the Arizona Fall League for BaseballHQ’s First Pitch Forum event. This was my 10th year attending, and I absolutely love it.

Not only do we get to watch live baseball from some of the best prospects in baseball, but there’s also nonstop fantasy baseball talk as well as the beginning of a 50-round draft and hold NFBC league. We run the first 23 rounds live in Arizona and then pick it up in January online for the final 27. Let’s take a closer look at the team I put together on Friday night.

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Royals phenom Adalberto Mondesi is going to be a hot topic this winter. By ripping off 32 steals in 291 plate appearances while also popping 14 home runs, Mondesi won quite a few fantasy championships. The hype may have crested yesterday when he was selected 28th overall in the very first NFBC draft of the 2019 season.

I’m going to do something novel (lazy) and just kind of assume we’re all on the same page about who Mondesi is as a player. This isn’t an analysis of his skills. I’ve done been there, done that elsewhere. As a hitter, he compares to one of the top fantasy assets in the league. This same comparable player was a massive resource suck for many years before finally breaking out.

Could Mondesi skip the painful growth seasons?

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